Labeling & Artwork Management: A Convergence on the Rise

If you haven’t heard yet - forward-thinking enterprises and industry analysts agree: Enterprise labeling and artwork management are converging. But why is this happening? And how can this help business?

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Well the answer is simple - It just makes sense. Companies have struggled for many years now to manage the growing complexities of their supply chains and go-to-market packaging content. Labeling has become more complicated as data requirements continue to expand, and artwork management has been challenged to meet an increasing number of demands on a global basis. Additionally, labeling and artwork management both face challenges around content review and approval as organizations look to streamline the process. However, significant efficiencies and cost savings can be found when adopting a single, unified approach to deal with customer, product, regulatory and regional complexities that impact both labeling and artwork management – whether it is on traditional packaging, online or in the supply chain.

Industry analysts are defining a singular labeling and artwork management platform where both enterprise labeling and traditional artwork management are core pillars. That is because there is a growing realization that by deploying these solutions together, companies can better address regulatory mandates, guarantee accuracy and consistency, mitigate risk, reduce complexity, ensure traceability, increase agility, and optimize costs. This is increasingly important as modern enterprises need to move products faster, comply with regulatory standards, and ensure greater accuracy and consistency in their efforts to expand globally. At the same time, these businesses feel added pressure to meet changing customer requirements while ensuring visibility, traceability and auditability.

Opportunity for new efficiencies

As enterprise labeling and artwork management gain significant market momentum, companies are looking for solutions that address all of their challenges. Unfortunately, existing solutions have traditionally been siloed, or not well integrated. This approach creates inefficiencies and redundancies across teams managing labeling and artwork content. When managing separate solutions, labels or artwork used in packaging and the supply chain can be delayed, inaccurate, and susceptible to hefty regulatory fines. Maintaining these different systems is costly and inefficient, and can limit growth.

In addition, collaboration between internal and external stakeholders can be difficult as companies struggle to provide easy access to labeling and artwork management across the organization, as well as with outside business partners. This coincides with the desire of organizations to upgrade from distinct desktop applications to enterprise-class solutions that offer flexible, scalable, standardized platforms for global growth. This is why companies are now looking for partners and solutions that offer cloud and on-premise deployment models capable of addressing the full range of customer needs with an end-to-end solution across both labeling and artwork management.

Addressing a broader set of challenges

This new combined approach redefines how enterprises—large and small—create, manage, and print complex labeling and packaging artwork with the flexibility to choose from a full range of capabilities, depending on their specific needs. This new method addresses a broader set of challenges through one comprehensive, end-to-end, cloud-based digital platform. It allows internal and external teams to have a more collaborative, unified way of creating, reviewing, approving, and printing labels and artwork.